----- Original Message ----- From: David Van Edwards <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Martin Shepherd <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: 23 October 2003 16:39 Subject: Re: Lute as a vanity
<snip>> > You are right to remark on the extreme thinness of the strings of the > Berlin painting, it looks almost impossible for our current notions > of tuning and gut strings. There are one or two other pictures of > lutes with the octave on the bass side, in particular one of the > intarsia where the difference is especially obvious. It would > certainly give even more brightness to the lowest course if one > assumes a thumb striking downwards. More troubling though is the > apparent octave on the bass side of the third course! I wonder if we > are at the limit of what can be "drawn" with a paintbrush? Yes, I was thinking of that intarsia, too, but I can't remember which one it is - any suggestions? I'm going to try this stringing and see what happens... I think you're right about the danger of overinterpreting the thickness or otherwise of strings in this painting; the Ambassadors painting is much more "accurate"- the lower and upper octaves are clearly different thicknesses, and though the strings are thin by modern standards, they seem well graded in thickness. The same cannot be said of the Berlin painting. > > Finally one consequence of the distorted skull which has not, so far > as I know, been remarked on is that if you look diagonally at the > painting so as to "face death head on", the things of this world, > including all the latest achievements of science and art as displayed > on the table come to appear less important and significant. So, on > this reading of the painting, it is showing an equivalence of the > moral and physical point of view which determines what value we place > on this world and the next. This ties in with the apparent > insignificance of the crucifix in the top left of the painting which > Stewart remarked on. Interesting. I had already remarked on the contrast between the skull and the rest when viewed from an extreme angle but I hadn't really considered all the allegorical possibilities of this juxtaposition - I have no doubt Holbein did! > > It is also worth remarking that these important points are > vanishingly unlikely to have come from Holbein himself. They will > have been an explicit part of the commission from the two sitters > [standers!] and will have been designed to show their cleverness and > piety in equal measure. In fact a round dance in which their > cleverness shows their piety which shows how they devalue cleverness! Yes, though I think Holbein was clever enough to have thought of some of the symbolic content of the painting himself, even if he did have to be careful not to upset his patrons in the process. In the matter of whether there was an implied contradiction between piety and cleverness, I'm not so sure. Is it not a 19th/20th C view that "simple" piety is good and intellectual grasp of theology bad? I'm sure you can enlighten me on that one! Best wishes, Martin
